How To Recolor Your Images in PowerPoint

After digging through tons of photos, you’ve finally found a great background photo to use in your PowerPoint presentation. But you want to recolor your images to be less distracting in your slide. To create a more subtle effect with your photo, a perfect way to do this is to change the color to a monochromatic scheme–meaning different values of the same color. Maybe you want to use a color from your accent or theme color pallet, or maybe you just want to turn it into a black and white photograph.

Either way, you don’t have to take multiple steps to edit your photo or use different software to get this effect. PowerPoint already has this tool ready for you to use. In this short video I’ll show you how you can get this professional effect in no time.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Recolor Your Images in PowerPoint

We cover all in the video, but if you prefer to read or follow along we outline the process below.

Recolor Image Step 1:

First, let’s go ahead an add a photo into the image placeholder in your PowerPoint by clicking the icon here. Then we’ll right click or (CTL+click on Mac) to send it it behind the other objects. (If you need an image, check out our stock images.)

Step 2:

Now that our image is selected, go up to Picture Format at the top, and click on the Format Pane icon and a panel will appear on the righthand side.

Step 3:

Navigate to the Picture tab in the panel and you’ll notice there are a few different menus where you can adjust different aspects of the image. For now, click on the Picture Color menu. Then click on the icon under Recolor at the bottom. You’ll notice PowerPoint gives you a variety of color options to choose from. The colors provided come from the accent colors in your theme color pallet. If you want to learn how to adjust these colors to fit your brand, then watch our video on Changing Accent Colors. Click the color that you want and it will be applied to your image.

Step 4:

If you need to, you can adjust the transparency of your image by clicking on the Picture Transparency and adjusting the slider to change the transparency percentage.

That’s it. Now you have recolored your images in PowerPoint. But if you still want to know more, Microsoft Support has more information on recoloring images.

Note: Whenever you’re replacing the image, you’ll have to reapply the color formatting to the new image.

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